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Game Debate #153: Dragon's Lair


Reed Rothchild

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33 members have voted

  1. 1. Rate based on your own personal preferences, NOT historical significance

    • 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time.
      0
    • 9/10 - Killer f'ing game. Everyone should play it.
      0
    • 8/10 - Great game. You like to recommend it.
    • 7/10 - Very good game, but not quite great.
    • 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
    • 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.
    • 4/10 - Meh. There's plenty of better alternatives to this.
      0
    • 3/10 - Not a very good game.
    • 2/10 - Pretty crappy.
    • 1/10 - Horrible game in every way.
      0
    • 0/10 - The Desert Bus of painful experiences. You'd rather shove an icepick in your genitals than play this.
    • Never played it, but you're interested.
    • Never played it, never will.


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A very good-looking game made of nothing but quicktime events. For the time it was a nice attempt at greatly advancing graphics, but in hindsight a shoddy execution of making games more like movies, something that's still relatively ill-advised imo, but now common in popular big-budget titles. At least it was done by a movie guy trying to be innovative, rather than a game company trying and failing to elevate the form by taking immersive action away from the player.

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I'm torn on this.  I kind of wanted to throw a point higher than I did, was also tempted to go with the hive mind of the 3 as well.

I've always equally liked and hated the game.  I love the artists work.  The cartoon animation, story, characters, the music and sound effects are all amazing, it's a living cartoon in an arcade cabinet.

And then I *HATE* with a passion the game was both(just for back then) grossly expensive to play, and that it required a photographic memory more or less to succeed at it which I don't have, my short term in some ways, patterns like that utterly sucks.   Even if I memorized the move sheet I'd still blow it.  YET...there's the Wii Trilogy and since release where it has been modernized into a never ending god of war style quick time event.  Now it's about speed and accuracy, and that I can do, yet it still requires some pretty high speed on some scenes or moves.

I currently own annoyingly the old style via the stunning for format GBC release.  I had considered the arcade cabinet toy from recent years but it didn't have the QTC so I dismissed it.  I do have that trilogy on GoG which has the moves, so when the itch needs a scratch I'm there.  I also love that since the Wii/Trilogy dropped you can choose just to watch it patched together well into a fun 10min~ cartoon to watch, same with the sequel, and space ace too.

The QTE update from the Trilogy saves the game for me from a 3/10 raising it to a 5 since most copies of it still suck. 🙂

Enjoy:

 

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I put it right at 5.  I have incredible memories of seeing this in the arcade, and then years later, I finally saved Daphne on the DVD version of the game.  I also beat Space Ace that way.  With a few of the visual hints and ability to practice some of the more difficult sequences, it actually becomes A LITTLE fun.  Sort of the way that studying flash cards and then getting them all right on the first try is fun.  Other than that, the game is really just as everyone has said:  trial and error.

 

I still had more fun with it than the NES version though.

Edited by wongojack
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10 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

3/10. The NES version people hate is actually more fun than plain old Dragon’s Lair.

Again in this thread even that comment pops up.  I've seen nothing but cheap dig videos on youtube about it having garbage control and being grating and it pushed me off it long ago.  That same game I think is also what the SNES and Gameboy got too.  Given how much I do like the animation side or the QTE upgrade versions of the classic, I sometimes wonder are they really that bad, or of those 3 is one a stand out for being the least awful when people just sheep in and take shots.  Also curious why @Tulpa thinks the US version is crap(piest) while JP or PAL works better.  Very strange.

Edited by Tanooki
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15 minutes ago, Sumez said:

The US version runs much, much slower for some reason. The difference is night and day.

Ok so the game, if you're into the style that it is, just so happens to run at a speed good enough it's more fun because it doesn't crawl and causes you to trip over junk as bit more speed would make intuitive to play.  That would make sense.

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Yeah, it's not even a contest. Play all three and you will see for yourself even on the first screen.

It's like for Europe and Japan they decided to give them a game that works, and for the US, they gave them the most broken piece of shit ever because they hate you and want you to suffer.

Or they rushed out the US release and corrected it for the other two markets. Either/or.

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As a piece of fantasy adventure animation, it is a fun (if frantic) piece of entertainment. As a game...it doesn't hold much appeal. The entire gimmick was making you memorize the inputs so that you could see more of the animation play out and stealing your quarters along the way. Today and with the ability to play it effectively "for free", there's really no reason to go through all of that other than for bragging rights, I suppose.

I have a great admiration for Don Bluth's work in animation and his are some of the most nostalgic media from my childhood. For featuring his wonderful artistry in a quirky fantasy setting, despite the very limited gameplay, I'll give Dragon's Lair a straight 5/10.

But yeah, just watch a playthrough on Youtube and enjoy it that way.

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5 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Again in this thread even that comment pops up.  I've seen nothing but cheap dig videos on youtube about it having garbage control and being grating and it pushed me off it long ago.  That same game I think is also what the SNES and Gameboy got too.  Given how much I do like the animation side or the QTE upgrade versions of the classic, I sometimes wonder are they really that bad, or of those 3 is one a stand out for being the least awful when people just sheep in and take shots.  Also curious why @Tulpa thinks the US version is crap(piest) while JP or PAL works better.  Very strange.

The SNES version is different (it might be the best home version that is not a straight port), and the Gameboy version is a straight conversion of a Spectrum game with the DL license strapped on.  I forget which one (Not DL), but it is forgettable. 

There is a Gameboy Color version which tries to be the arcade game.  Most fans of DL see it as a success, but I've never played it.  the TI-99 also got a modern homebrew that is trying (and succeeding) to be the arcade game.  People praise that version to no end.

The other 8-bit computers like the Adam, C64, Spectrum and Amstrad got a version of the game that is quite playable and reminiscent of the arcade game without the simultaneous rage inducing frustration and complete boredom of the NES port.  I have played the Adam version quite a bit and really like it.  But I like the original too.

Amiga, ST, and DOS got arcade ports that are all pretty faithful to the arcade for their time.
 

 

Edited by wongojack
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